Employee activism in tech stops short of organizing unions - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/08/technology/tech-companies-union-organizing.html <comment><USER3> My Dad owns a construction company in a highly unionized region. He is an advocate for unions, although he acknowledges that quality varies among them. That said, many of the conditions where unions are beneficial don't seem to apply in tech:

* Vocational training: unions in our area run schools to train craftsman (e.g. carpenters). This increases productivity and screens for quality.

* Shifting workforce: Construction companies expand/contract as they get big jobs. The union is a clearinghouse that enables tradespeople to switch between companies as they expand/contract. The union also helps by running benefit programs that travel with the workers.

* Commodity-ish labor: Most carpenters have about the same productivity, so it makes sense to negotiate their compensation in bulk. Unions don't work as well when productivity/value varies greatly between workers.

I also worked as an apprentice carpenter for several summers during college. I wouldn't say that the carpenters I worked with had a glowing view of the union. They seemed suspicious that the union reps were corrupt, and talked about how they would "shut down the job" over minor union infractions. They also believed the "hall" was corrupt/political in how it matched carpenters who were out of work to jobs. Several were also contemptuous of what they saw as the union discouraging hard work (if you were working hard, you were "ruining the job.")

The main point I am trying to make is that unions are complex from both the employer and employee side.

<comment><USER4> Vocational training absolutely could be done in tech, web/app development is much closer to carpentry than it is to computer science in my view.

Unions are definitely complex, it's not a silver bullet to solve issues in the workplace. But at its core it's a group of people negotiating as a unit: the rest is just the natural evolution of a group where some power has been attained. More members means more organization needed to keep everything straight, and more organization means more barriers to joining. Once there's a real structure to the power a union gets, it's subject to the same people problems as an other organization.

<comment><USER3> True, but one difference is that the market for carpentry talent is local. So, a company that is supporting a union in city X has a reasonable expectation of benefiting from its training.

With remote work, computer science is much more global, so someone could easily be trained by a union and then go work for a company that doesn't support the union.

Interestingly, this is one of my Dad's main complaints about unions these days: That our city trains great carpenters, but then they are recruited away to non-union areas.

<comment><USER5> Seems that a fix for that would be to attach a loan/bond to the training that gets repaid by cash or by credits for working at a member employer.

<comment><USER6> Unions were started in part as a response to indentured servitude. I'm not sure that would fly, politically.

<comment><USER7> Purdue does something similar without requiring you work for a specific employer.

[https://www.purdue.edu/dfa/types-of-aid/income-share- agreeme...](https://www.purdue.edu/dfa/types-of-aid/income-share- agreement/index.html) (Income Share Agreements)

[https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/03/29/708152566/epis...](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/03/29/708152566/episode-903-a-new- way-to-pay-for-college) (Episode 903: A New Way To Pay For College)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I used to be all around anti-union. Now that I'm older I regret that position. There are bad unions and there are good unions. Sometimes they can be corrupt, but they never really exceed the corruptness of the corporate powers they negotiate with. It's an imperfect solution, but it's the only one that seems to work. The idea that we are all lone super stars that need to negotiate for ourselves is not only selfish, but more than likely wrong. Even if I considered myself a super-coder, should I be willing to sacrifice the well- being of everyone else in my field?

Tech workers feel pretty good here in the US because they are compensated better than most. The time to organize is now, not after worker supply has increased or during a recession when workers are more desperate. We have real issues (Ageism, Working Conditions, etc) that we'll never be able to address individually.

<comment><USER9> > but they never really exceed the corruptness of the corporate powers they > negotiate with

I'm not convinced that is the case, nor is it an either or (union or corporate powers).

Your protection by the union depends on what the union negotiates... beyond that their ability to effect change pretty much stops there. Then you are again at the mercy of your employer. I've had first had experience with "oh yeah they can do that" union situations.

Also premature organization IMO is much like premature optimization, more likely to be a bigger problem and miss any real issues.

<comment><USER10> You only have the current benefits because some sort of union fought for them. Call it government, call it whatever but it was an organization fighting on your behalf.

> beyond that their ability to effect change pretty much stops there.

Is that true? You can't negotiate even further by yourself? I think you do.

<comment><USER9> >You only have the current benefits because some sort of union fought for them.

I think that is a bit of a grand statement don't you think?

I've worked non union jobs and I'm pretty sure the benefits I get are not directly due to a union... I wouldn't associate ALL benefits with a union, nor would that necessitate forming one simply if you thought those benefits were related.

I've worked for some nice people, I do belive they seriously want to provide their people benefits...

>Is that true? You can't negotiate even further by yourself? I think you do.

Negotiate what exactly? The Union and corporate relationship generally lays out what the lay of the land is, the the areas that the employer gets to decide are usually pretty obvious and the union isn't likely to call a general strike because an employer made a choice.

<comment><USER11> If you think that any of the labour laws, health benefits, vacation days, special leave (bereavement for example) or any of the other things you take for granted as part of your normal work day didn't come from unions continually pushing the envelope of worker's rights then I good luck with that.

The remuneration package offered by a business is typically dictated by the business sector (competitors) so saying "I've worked non union jobs and I'm pretty sure the benefits I get are not directly due to a union." is faulty logic. If half the shops are union shops or competition for staff is fierce then pay/benefits will reflects.

Unions gave us 40 weeks (as opposed to 60+), no child labour, work place health & safety (maybe not such a big deal in tech but in other industry it's critical), etc... yes, government legislation made them law but unions applied pressure to get it done. While many aspects of unions have, or appear to have, outlived their usefulness they are still a very important tool in the employer-employee relationship.

Look at it this way, if unions were really just about the money then employers wouldn't care so much and attempt to keep unions out of their businesses (sometimes illegally). An employer could just say to the union "this is how much I have to spend on labour, how would you like it budgeted" and call it a day cause at that point it's just deciding on how big your slice of pie is.

I guess I sound like a union fanboy, which I'm not, but we shouldn't discount the very real impact and ongoing influence unions have.

<comment><USER9> I just don't buy into the idea that because unions have helped generally compared to decades ago ... that means you should consider one as a solution now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm always amazed at the complete double standard between unions and companies.

Look at the discussion here: lots of people arguing against unions, saying they're just plain bad, or they're good in some industries but not in tech, or we just don't need them, or whatever.

And not to say that these arguments are wrong, but....

Hands up, how many of you think that it's a good idea to run a business with employees as a sole proprietorship?

I'm pretty sure there are no hands up. The first thing you do when you're going to create a business with employees is to organize. This is so ingrained that we don't even think about it. When was the last time you saw "Ask HN: do I need to incorporate?" Of _course_ you do. There are many questions around where to do it and what type of corporation to create and what ownership structure you want to use and so forth, but there's _no_ question about whether it's a good idea.

When employees band together to negotiate collectively, we call that a "union" and we come up with many reasons why this may not be a good idea.

When employers band together to negotiate collectively, we call that a "corporation" and nobody takes even a moment to wonder whether or not this is a good thing to do.

If workers are better off without organization, maybe the same is true on the management side? Instead of big companies, we should have individual managers on their own, employing a team as a sole proprietor.

<comment><USER13> I'm pretty confused by your argument here.

When employers band together to negotiate collectively, we call that a "cartel" and it's radioactively illegal, and not a single person defends it as a good thing.

When employees band together to negotiate collectively, we call that a "union" and have a variety of opinions on it; with plenty of people thinking it's a good thing.

Corporations don't seem remotely analogous to unions and are mostly created for legal reasons, not for anything related to collective negotiation?

<comment><USER14> I believe the following is being referred to:

Inside a company, the management/owners regularly talk together about how to minimize the cost of employees, including compensation. But employees talking together about maximizing their compensation is considered scandalous, harmful or even unethical. The practice is even given special names "organizing" and "unionizing" and is certainly considered unusual.

Corporations acting together are not analogous to a union because, legal fictions aside, corporations are not people.

But the activities of humans working together inside a cooperation to maximize some benefit, say a promotion or higher personal profit buy cutting employee costs vs a group of employees seeking a pay increases, seems a credible analogy.

<comment><USER15> I'm going to be controversial here. I don't think management/owners regularly talk together about how to minimize the cost of employees. I mean, it happens occasionally, but it's not actually a normal conversation in a company.

Instead companies talk about how much they can afford to pay for salaries. Frequently they talk about increasing the cost of employees from the point of view of expanding. Should we hire more people? Will it improve the business? Should we increase salaries? Will it allow us to attract better employees?

When companies are talking about reducing or restricting the cost of employees, it's usually in the context of solving problems in the company. The company is losing in money in some areas. Should we lay off employees? Can we negotiate a pay freeze or a pay cut until the company can get in better shape? Will we lose too many employees if we do that? Will we lose our best employees if we do that?

The biggest problem I have with unions (being one of the few programmers who has actually worked as a programmer in a union) is that in my experience is the conversations almost _never_ discuss the health of the company. They _only_ discuss strategies for maximizing pay, benefits or ensuring that layoffs are impossible.

I honestly believe that the attitude of "They are doing it so we have to too!" is a thing that destroys companies. The Us vs. Them approach helps nobody. Yes, if you have no choice and the company you are working for has decided that _they_ want "Us vs. Them" and you can't convince them to join you in making the company and it's employees successful, I can completely see the point of a union. For me, that's a last resort. I'll try everything I can to fix the problem a different way before I'll say, "We're going to organise so that we can effectively compete with you". This includes simply quitting my job and finding another one.

Or to be more clear: I greatly value working at a company where I wouldn't ever think of organising a union. I value working at a company where the company values me and sees it as a cooperative venture. I _don 't_ want to work for a company that views me as an adversary or as someone they need to manipulate. _That 's_ why I don't want a union. In my fairly long career I've worked for both kinds of companies, so I know both exist.

<comment><USER14> I agree that there is nuance and details that make it more useful in some cases than others. Conversely, unions can assist a companies survival. There are cases where even the teamsters(!) agreed to pay cuts to save businesses. And of course it can occasionally go wrong and there can be incompetence just like everything else in this world. But there are some widely held beliefs that demonize unions more than should be.

For example[1], empirically the presence of a union does not correlates with a bad workplace or failing business because the bulk of last half of the twentieth century saw widespread union membership yet was dominated by enormous growth in both production and quality of life along side high job satisfaction. While the last 40 years with declining union membership has seen slower GDP growth and in some cases quality of life reversal. So unions can't be causing the problem.

And the Us vs Them attitude is certainly close to catastrophic. But people aren't going to go through the effort, stress and risk of forming a union unless there are already some never addressed grievances in the first place. The antagonism would have to precede the talk of unionizing not be caused by the appearance of the union. And after the fact, there is at least some small chance of discussing, explaining and solving the problems. But I too would bail long before it got that broken. But for tight labor markets, with few and poorly run industries, this choice doesn't exists.

[1]in western countries and Japan

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The benefit in tech is options. Don't like your job, get another one. Don't like your boss, get another one. For many locations it's just the matter of turning a button on Linkedin or for many people sending some emails.

That keeps people idealistic, vocal and demanding of the behavior from their employer/bosses. This is not the norm in other business functions. Unfortunately.

<comment><USER17> This current state of affairs gives employees a lot of power, as you observed, but it's important to realize it will not last. The downturn will come. The question is whether we want to use our current ephemeral labor power to protect ourselves when the downturn comes, because organization will be 100x more difficult when things go to shit and people don't think they have the luxury of risking their career to build a union.

<comment><USER18> There's a dichotomy in software development between the developers who represent single points of failure in an organization and the increasing number of "replaceable" developers i.e. developers versed only in popular frameworks or who hold introductory/recent-grad levels of domain knowledge with no desire to go further.

I think right now were in a "golden age" where the latter group still holds power and can command decent salary. I'm convinced this will start to change in 2-3 years and a lot of people who came in for that golden age are going to face a shocking reality that they aren't as privileged as they thought they were.

With the fall of the second group software companies will have much more leverage across the board and we'll see darker and darker patterns prosper.

<comment><USER17> This exists in all industries. It is called experience.

Developers convincing themselves that they're single points of failure is arrogance, IMO. 99.9% of the time if you leave then someone can step right up and take your place. Oh sure there will be costs, lost productivity, maybe an outage, but the world keeps turning. So go ahead and take that vacation.

<comment><USER19> The OP here mentions that they can just go to another shop and get work if they do not like their current shop. That's fine, but the employers can do the same too. They can fire you and get another person as well. Granted, right now, the employee holds a lot more power in the market, but that will ebb over time, and it may even switch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Tangent - there was an article on the NYTimes the other day about how their editorial work was trivializing Bernie Sanders political impact the last election and actually using misleading headlines to distort the truth. I'll try to find the link (on my phone now). It was pretty eye opening and had links to sources as well as exposing some of these editors and their role working for the Clinton camp.

I call this out because I see a steady stream of NYT articles that focus on big tech in a negative way.

Big tech has its problems and should be regulated. On the other hand, I question the NYT and their motive. This clearly isn't honest journalism but NYT focusing on companies that are now directly competing with the NYT.

Edit: article I was referring to [https://fair.org/home/sidney-embers-secret- sources/](https://fair.org/home/sidney-embers-secret-sources/)

<comment><USER21> The problem is that Sanders is in a democratic primary. If people in the circle of democratic party thinking aren't valid sources for reporting on a democratic political candidate, who is? Clinton was the party nominee -- all of the players will have done something connected to that campaign.

The democratic party is a big-tent and demands consensus. When all of these connected folks eyeroll at the guy, it hints that he would have trouble governing. An "out-there outsider guy" persona works for the GOP because the GOP is a political machine party... some state senator from North Dakota would kill kittens on TV if instructed to.

<comment><USER22> The problem isn't that the democratic party is doing what's best for the democratic party. The problem is that The New York Times is doing what's best for the democratic party. They claim to be journalism but more and more, they are clearly biased political activism (as is the case with this story).

<comment><USER21> Who would you suggest that they talk to?

Journalists get stories, they do that by talking to people and getting information. The New York Times has a pretty obvious mainstream approach. Very few credible people in that community have anything to say about Sanders.

I didn't notice lots of biased political activism when they were reporting on the prosecution of NY legislators and a governor. When did the switch flip?

<comment><USER22> > _Very few credible people in that community have anything to say about > Sanders._

He's consistently polled in the top three for the democratic primary. He's also consistently ahead of Warren who the NYT often promotes. The New York Times is trying to manufacture credibility by selectively covering candidates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> "In other cases, highly compensated engineers may see themselves as independent operators who have plenty of leverage on their own and thus do not need to join a union effort."

This is definitely my feeling. When I can just open up LinkedIn and browse all the unsolicited interview requests I get, I don't end up feeling like I really need a union to protect my current job - I can always just leave and go somewhere else if I'm unhappy.

That said, if someone asked me to vote for it I might do that, but I wouldn't put the effort into organizing myself.

<comment><USER24> _I can always just leave and go somewhere else if I'm unhappy._

You think you can, and hopefully you actually can, but your employer might have other ideas... [https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-google-others-settle- anti-po...](https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-google-others-settle-anti- poaching-lawsuit-for-415-million/)

I'll expand on that slightly - the point is that employers are not beyond _illegally_ getting together to restrict our access to alternative jobs. While it feels like we can just get a new role with a couple of phone calls, we might not be getting the best deal for ourselves regardless.

<comment><USER23> Yeah, that was pretty terrible. Good news is that the government found it out and put a stop to it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is going to be a unpopular opinion. I think a tech union would likely be good for the average tech worker - and bad for absolutely everyone else, broader society included.

Cartels and price-fixing agreements are extremely lucrative, which is why they were commonplace until outlawed by antitrust legislation, and why cartels like OPEC still operate today. Unions and collective bargaining are no different. Unions are equivalent to a cartel of labor-suppliers, and collective bargaining is identical to price-fixing.

Just like with cartels and price-fixing agreements, unionizing would likely benefit the average tech worker. It would also have an extremely bad effect on innovation, bureaucracy, and cost-of-tech-development which would spill over to consumers in the form of higher prices.

I'm in favor of breaking up big corporations, as well as implementing a wealth tax, raising the top tax rates, and strengthening the social safety net. But I don't think encouraging the formation of cartels and price-fixing agreements is in society's best interests.

<comment><USER26> The only parties that I'm aware of which are forming cartels (and getting slapped on the wrist for it) are American software companies. Seems odd to accuse not yet existing entities of the same crime that their opponents have been already convicted for.

Furthermore, a lot of software companies are filthy rich. If anything, American corporations are squeezing the last drops of profit through creative (read borderline criminal) accounting, outsourcing, faux-contracting and other creative arrangements. Said additional profit is not shared with the employees, invested in society or used in any productive way.

How is it benefiting anyone that Apple is buying back stock for example or that they have hundreds of billions parked somewhere?

<comment><USER25> Just because corporations are getting away with bad behavior doesn't mean we should encourage a free-for-all. I've already endorsed breaking up big corporations, more vigorous antitrust enforcement, and increasing taxes on the wealthy. There is such a thing as a right way and a wrong way to fix a problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> In my opinion, unions are very valuable in cases where employees cannot effectively realize market value for their skillset.

This can happen for a number of reasons:

1\. In cases of specialized skills (like working at a factory where you've trained on a particular machine). 2\. In cases of natural or artificial monopolies (like working for a federal government). 3\. In cases where companies and workers incentives are misaligned (like that of a construction worker).

Probably more that I'm missing.

I don't see how the current software engineer market meets this condition.

There are more open software engineering jobs than there are software engineers. If my employer mistreats me, I'll leave and go to a different company, and likely I can find a job just as good very easily.

I'm not sure how a union would benefit me personally.

<comment><USER8> How confident are you that this climate will continue for the rest of your working life? How confident are you that this climate will extend past your working life?

<comment><USER28> We can form a union when we need to form a union. There's no point in forming one _just in case_ software engineering no longer becomes a sought-after skilled job.

<comment><USER29> How shortsighted: "We can form a union when we're in a disadvantageous position."

There's plenty of stuff that software engineers could want to improve _today_ around oncall, long hours, IP restrictions, non-competes, pay transparency, parental leave, equity, promotion and career management, educational benefits, age/gender/racial/etc discrimination, health care, etc.

When we're in a position of power is a great time for us to form a union and start tackling some of the second tier of issues (like non-competes). If not now, when?

<comment><USER28> If I'm not happy with my company, I leave the company. It's not that hard. And I don't pay any dues to a union for that right.

Non-competes are unenforceable in California.

Do you actually think that writing software is going to be come an unskilled job some day?

<comment><USER29> >If I'm not happy with my company, I leave the company.

This presupposes that you'll have a list of companies to join that have all the benefits that you want.

> Non-competes are unenforceable in California.

Great. Tech work happens nationwide. You could say, "I got mine in California" or you could help pull up others. I believe that it's worthwhile, sometimes, for me to spend some of my income to help others reach a better station.

> Do you actually think that writing software is going to be come an unskilled > job some day?

Do you not? Also, there are plenty of workers in tech who aren't software developers. We should be helping them get benefits as well.

<comment><USER28> > This presupposes that you'll have a list of companies to join that have all > the benefits that you want.

Does anyone, anywhere, have a list of companies that checks _literally all their boxes_?

> I believe that it's worthwhile, sometimes, for me to spend some of my income > to help others reach a better station.

Again, I don't think that software engineering is in a position that needs unionizing. This argument is nil to me. You're asking me to spend my income for something I don't see as a net gain.

> Do you not? Also, there are plenty of workers in tech who aren't software > developers. We should be helping them get benefits as well.

You've suddenly moved the goalposts to be about something other than software engineers, which is not what we were talking about. If another profession wants to go unionize, more power to them. I don't see _my_ profession as benefiting, hence I'm arguing against it.

<comment><USER30> > You're asking me to spend my income for something I don't see as a net gain.

Less than $100 a month to have an organization fight open floor plans and to provide legal services on your behalf for when HR fails you seems like a small price to pay.

> I don't see my profession as benefiting

Say you're working in the game industry, and management keeps on slashing the QA org. Enjoy the additional stress of having to write all of the automation tests yourself on top of fiendish deadlines when you're already working 50 hour weeks with unpaid overtime.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Biggest question is if a union or union-like system makes sense in companies where the average tenure is ~2-3 years mostly due to employee choice.

<comment><USER32> Why do they leave? Are those reasons addressable by a union?

<comment><USER33> I know many people leave because of pay reasons, and maybe a union could address that.

But I also find my self largely wanting to leave out of a desire for a new challenge, learn something new. It would be way to easy to stay stagnant at a company and than find yourself forced to deal with new technology in a new role, that for everyone else is old technology (and there is a limit to how much you can realistically do that for side projects). Not that it does not happen anyways.

I don't see any way a Union could (or should) address this.

<comment><USER30> I don't know how often unions actually impact _what_ the business does instead of _how_ it operates, but here's an example: "Audi's unions demand electric model for main German plant" [0]

> Mosch, who sits on parent VW's supervisory board, asked top management to > provide specific information as to how the growing shift to electric cars > and digital services will affect employment at Audi, which has 88,000 > workers globally.

Having worked at places where management was deaf to employee concerns about the direction of the business, and seen the consequences of bad management fall upon those employees, I can clearly _some_ sort of leverage would be good for engineers. Perhaps that could involve forcing a company to invest in new technology, thus allowing you to grow as an engineer- and perhaps making your job more secure by making the business more competitive.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13986889](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13986889)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> There has to be a balance of power between labor and management. When management has too much power, that power will be abused. When labor has too much power, that power will be abused.

Unions make sense when labor doesn't have any power. Do programmers have enough power? I'd say yes. Maybe not across the board but -- in general -- yes. We aren't coal miners, that's for sure.

<comment><USER35> It depends on the specific industry in tech.

Do programmers in general tech startups have enough power? I'd say yes too. Do programmers in the gaming industry have enough power? Definitely not.

<comment><USER36> The gaming industry has an interesting problem: a lot of fresh college grads that want to work on games because they are passionate about games.

In that case, I'm unsure of how unionizing would help much, as publishers could simply invest in games from non-union shops, and happily abandon the studios that are unionized.

<comment><USER37> > In that case, I'm unsure of how unionizing would help much, as publishers > could simply invest in games from non-union shops, and happily abandon the > studios that are unionized.

and game development work is probably the most trivial software development to move to foreign jurisdictions. unless the union promoters would like video game tariffs.

<comment><USER36> This may seem snide, but it's extremely rare for a union not to be protectionist. Mostly on account of how unions join together with unions for adjunct industries.

That said, I'm not convinced game development would be easily outsourced. Games are some of the most highly optimized pieces of software out there, as it's in their interest to squeeze every bit of performance out of consumer hardware. You can think of their target as an intersecting line between the game being playable on consumer hardware vs. the graphics quality users expect that would lead to the game selling. Optimization has a big payoff to increase the possible market to buy a given game.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> The countries with the best human welfare indicators also have the highest percentage of people in unions. It's the only countervailing force against plutocratic power.

<comment><USER39> _It's the only countervailing force against plutocratic power._

"Only?" It can itself, become a nexus of plutocratic power. The best antidote to corruption is transparency and the dispersal of power.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs)

<comment><USER38> I'm talking about the Nordics at the top, with 70% of people in unions, followed by Germany/France/Benelux. Transparency doesn't give create political power. Coordinating the interests of millions of workers takes organization, and a broad and politically active trade union movement is the only successful example in history of delivery widely shared prosperity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Maybe unionization needs a disrupt? I'm not against unionization in a lot of industries, but it just doesn't make sense in its current form for the tech scene or any other high demand position. It feels like an outdated mechanism used for people who were happy to sit in the same role, doing the same thing, for 45yrs.

<comment><USER41> Modern unions that only represent one type of skill or workers in one company (or both!) are far less effective than historical unions that aimed to unionize as many workers as possible under the same umbrella. Being able to represent your members even if they switch companies gives you a lot more opportunities.

Unions are (at least supposed to be) democratically run, so if tech workers don't want to sit in the same position for 45 years until they can collect a pension, their union doesn't need to negotiate for that. They can use that leverage for something else.

Putting that together, your modernized union might be an industry-wide organization that acts both for collective bargaining and as a placement agency. They could bargain for making switching companies easier - <USER2> employers need to support specific benefits providers so workers don't need to switch. And they could use their network to improve bargaining - a big part of strike preparation is making sure everyone is taken care of ahead of time; the union could secure job offers for workers who can't afford to go on strike.

<comment><USER42> That's the difference between a craft union and an industrial union. A long time ago, there was the American Federation of Labor, the group for craft unions, and the Congress of Industrial Organizations, the group of industrial unions. The AFL had the Plumbers, the Electricians, the Machinists, etc. The CIO had the United Auto Workers, the Steelworkers, the United Mine Workers, etc. They merged in 1955.

Nobody cares much about that any more.

If you want to see a modern union, check out The Animation Guild.[1] Local 839, IATSE. They represent most of the major studio animators in Hollywood. Although they've tried, they have not been able to organize game developers.

It's about fear. Try to organize a union in the US and you will probably be fired. Even though that's illegal. WalMart has closed down stores that voted in a union. Uber workers have a strike scheduled for July 15, but it probably won't do much in the US.

[1] [https://animationguild.org/](https://animationguild.org/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> It's generally my understanding that unions tend to decrease labor mobility, and are most effective for improving working conditions when labor mobility is naturally very low, as in industries dominated by a few players (shipping, auto) or where company-specific knowledge becomes very important (retail, maybe construction?). Industries with a high proportion of freelancers tend to form guilds, which are slightly different and often focus on licensure (barbers, doctors, lawyers). But programmers — like managers, accountants and bankers — have highly transferable skills that give them lots of employment options. Additionally, programming creates its own communication skills by (literal) networking, which aids programmers searching for jobs (they can send code samples over a wire). As such, competition for labor is more effective in tech than in many other fields.

</comment><comment><USER44> How come the NY Times doesn't push for unions for Wall St? Surely these guys slaving away over spreadsheets for Silicon Valley level pay should be unionized too, right?

</comment><comment><USER45> > "Associating unions with blue-collar work and making it a stigma to talk > about unions in white-collar circles, that's very deliberate"

This is my observation too, right now there is simply a correlation that doesn't have to be.

It doesn't matter that you get paid a comfortable amount, and that another startup delivers snacks all day, and another startup delivers catered food to you: you aren't getting paid what you are worth to these companies.

The board members are just the VCs and the founders and they aren't in a position to change that. The fraction of a fraction of a percent equity that they told you "was a generous amount" after feeding your face has nothing to do with what a more equitable amount could be. Doesn't give you any information about all the scenarios in which you would get nothing because the strike is too high and the preferred shares liquidity preferences are too onerous.

Even the cash component of tech compensation could likely be 75-150% higher. This has nothing to do with the stagnating wages in other sectors, we are working with this generation's largest and fastest growing companies and could accelerate comp growth and other changes.

<comment><USER46> I think that's not the only factor. Unions will also cap wages for the highest earners. And everyone thinks they are going to end up in that 1 percenter salary.

<comment><USER45> > Unions will also cap wages for the highest earners.

its okay if the average moves up, and transparency increases on stock options and the liquidity preferences of preferred shareholders. this is only currently relevant to non-public companies, and this article was about startups so thats fitting

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I acknowledge that there are definite issues at play with employment in the tech industry, but, come on; we are one of the most coddled and well-payed segments of the entire laboring economy. Maybe unions aren't being organized because we aren't forced to work graveyard shifts with few to no breaks for very little pay? I'm not sure the actual issues at hand in the tech industry are best addressed by unions (at least in the traditional sense).

</comment><comment><USER48> The tech industry today, is captured quite well by Rolling Stone's Victor Juhasz illustrations

[https://www.instagram.com/p/BzJO6ELjJT9/](https://www.instagram.com/p/BzJO6ELjJT9/)

[https://www.instagram.com/p/BzJP9nlDA5c/](https://www.instagram.com/p/BzJP9nlDA5c/)

Thinking that unions are going to have an effect is like believing flies effect pigs.

<comment><USER49> Did you have an alternate proposal for course of action?

<comment><USER48> Save up and eject as soon as you can, and be realistic about what you are up against.

Thats been the MO for people at Big Oil, Big Pharma and Wall Street for a long time now. People are in deep denial about the state of affairs.

These are "too big to fail" systems with too much momentum built up behind them, for a trajectory change.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I already feel distrust for my outspoken colleagues who purport to speak for me when making demands of management, but would treat me like James Damore if I dissented from their opinions.

The last thing I want is to let those same people formally represent me in a union. Given the current climate, those are very likely to be the people who would be running it.

</comment><comment><USER51> For a long time I had an impression that Microsoft had some kind of union(s) like group running things there.

Is it so, or my memory is playing tricks with me?

</comment><comment><USER52> Tech unions are a way for bureaucrats to take a tax off the backs of hard working tech workers with no benefits.

I am well off, have a flexible work life balance, and I enjoy my job. There is nothing that a union would bring to the table for me.

If there was a union in Silicon Valley in the early 80s, we would be no where close to where we are today. Look at the stark difference between a Silicon Valley worker vs someone working at Boeing or other unionized shops.

</comment><comment><USER53> Imagine not getting paid overtime but arguing online how unions in tech are bad (while doing overtime).

Sometimes HN is a caricature.

<comment> chupa-chups n-gate.com :)</comment></comment>


Tesla Model S is great, except - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@michaelmeier_90534/tesla-model-s-is-great-except-1638f3f4d96f#.cjg00xmfp <comment><USER2> Try non-conformity under European law. Threaten to cancel the contract and follow through. Win your lawsuit. Make life better for all of us.

The point is that non-conformity suits often hardly have any stake. Why bother for €100. With a Tesla, it's different. Software regressing is clearly non- conform. And non-conformity is not related to the waranty periode either, but to the expected lifetime of a product. In case of a car, many years.

I think a ruling by the European court that software should be safe and functional throughout the expected lifetime would be the best that can happen for consumers.

</comment><comment><USER3> Oh my god, nothing annoys me more than software features getting _worse_ after software updates. Like the removal of swipe-to-unlock on latest iOS. Apple, you spent almost a decade training people to swipe to unlock their devices, and now suddenly you remove it. That's monumentally bad design.

If Tesla does the same, where software updates change usage patterns, then well - it only cements my decision to stick with more traditional manufacturers for now.

</comment><comment><USER4> the ebooks issue, looks more like a different default configuration has superseded the old. Have you tried to change the options?</comment>


Ask HN: Finding a team for a hackathon? - <AUTHOR>

I'll be attending my first hackathon next week, but the rules require that programmers work in teams of 3.
The hackathon page says that there will be a few hours to form teams before the event starts.
I'm wondering if that usually works. I don't know anyone in the area, and I'm not sure if it's a good idea to show up without a team. <comment><USER2> It is very likely that you will not be the only person to show up to the event by yourself. If they have set ahead some time for forming teams then that is a great opportunity to meet new developers/designers/etc to work with.

I've participated in and hosted a number of hackathons and I always see organic teams for at the event. It will help if you can convey to potential teammates that you can plug into a team well IE: knowledge in a language/tech/skillset and knowing how to use version control, etc.

Not all hackathons are the same but they are a lot of fun and a great opportunity to learn new things and meet new people. Have fun and good luck!

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd definitely suggest trying to find a team ahead of time. The events that I've been to have always had several people without a team but it isn't until the event gets going that people start talking and working together. I think most organizers do not do enough to try to counteract the awkwardness people have when meeting for the first time.

It wasn't a hackathon, but I found my current colleagues for a challenge.gov app challenge through twitter search (one guy tweeted seeing if any of his followers knew a specific API and I responded) -- now we are in business together.

</comment><comment><USER4> Which hackathon?

<comment><AUTHOR> Talking about the Cleanweb LA hackathon. If anyone wants to get together for it, email me at email@example.com.</comment></comment>


Examine.com has grown up: $700,000 in the past year - <AUTHOR> http://www.solorwell.com/examine-com-is-grown-up-700000-in-the-past-year/ <comment><USER2> What prompted dropping all links to supplements purchasable online? Because you guys are an unbiased source, did you still feel it was wrong to offer an affiliate link to the product?

I absolutely love Examine.com and have shared it with many friends, but I seriously questioned that move from both a business and helpfulness perspective.

1\. From the user's perspective, it's helpful to click right out and get the product if you want it.

2\. From the business perspective, that's a shit load of Amazon cookies to be dropping, and you're not compromising your message since you treat all supplements equally and back it with research.

Thanks for creating an amazing resource!

<comment><USER3> It's easier and simpler.

While we linked to only the generic search from Amazon.com, it's easier to doubt the research when we still profit from the sales.

Examine.com is run as a lifestyle business. If we wanted to maximize revenue, we could easily 2-3x our revenue in the span of 6 months. Just not our approach.

<comment><USER2> Gotcha. Makes sense. Time for money tradeoff. Thanks for the answer!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hi, I'm Sol.

Any questions, just ask.

<comment><USER4> Hey Sol. I was getting into nutrition just slightly before Examine launched, and was completely incredulous that something like Examine.com didn't already exist. As you mention in the post, the incentives in this industry are totally perverse. We're taking an anti-supplement stance with MealSquares partially due to some of the research you've helped collate and rate (we've done a lot of our own too of course :). I've happily watched Examine.com grow and I wanted to say thanks for trying to improve the epistemic standards we have for nutrition. Keep fighting the good fight. P.S. would you venture an opinion on Soylent?

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the kind words, and good luck. We're thankfully at a stage now where we're well cashflow positive so we can just focus on what we do best.

> Soylent

Beyond the link that MDS100 posted, I personally think it's a bit shortsighted. Paring food down into some kind of overly simplistic "consume this" ignores all the social and psychological aspects of eating (not to mention the satiety considerations of chewing something versus drinking it).

As a replacement for food, I think it's foolish. As something to help you get to X macros in a pinch ... well, I'd rather take a protein shake and then mix whatever I was missing into it (need fats? Nuts. Need carbs? Tons of additions)

<comment><USER4> That's exactly how mealsquares started. My prototype is open source at [http://lesswrong.com/lw/h2h/soylent_orange_whole_food_open_s...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/h2h/soylent_orange_whole_food_open_source_soylent/)

Speaking of which I've been meaning to update it since I discovered that rice bran is a better option than marmite.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> @SoloX5 - big fan here (from /r/fitness)!

I'm wondering why you didnt setup examine.com as a wiki (I read somewhere that it is a Wordpress site right now).

Each of your landing pages are heavy and (I assume) are constantly being edited. How do you manage that process ?

It'll be nice to know the plugins,etc. you use for the site - its brilliant for a quick encyclopedia-ish wordpress setup !

Quick comment - it might be a good idea to go SSL by default on the site. Your register/login pages are also non-ssl.

<comment><USER3> Hihi.

We have a wiki-backend, but the reality is that our subject matter is far too specialized.

The edits are not as frequent as you'd imagine - one of our guys does the lead research on our page, emails the editors, and then they all hash it over, partly via email/asana, and partly with online editing. Then when they are all happy with it, it goes to the copyeditor to clean up (another fittitor!)

You can also click on the "History" link to see how a page has evolved.

RE: SSL - yes. We are working on rewriting the entire code base from scratch, so that is one of the things on our massive todo list!

And thanks for the kind words.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hey man no question in mind, just wanted to let you know that examine is a lifesaver. I recommend it to all of my clients, friends and family. Some are ignorant to the truth but many listen, thankyou.

<comment><USER3> Thanks!

We've tried to be as non-condescending as possible. It's not hard being right, it's hard to teach/show someone the truth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Also curious how the domain examine.com was acquired, was it something dormant that you or one of your team already own, or did you actually shell out 4,5 or 6 figures for the said domain?

One example of a successful generic domain is bodybuilding.com which I believe was bought for $30k a long time ago and then developed instead of sat on.

<comment><USER3> We did purchase it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm curious about how the Examine team came to the price point for the Stack Guides.

Simply put, $50 is incredibly high for an eBook — particularly when the site itself hosts a large quantity of that information for free.

<comment><USER9> Actually, $50 is _nothing_ for a quality info-product, and the best people in the business always "give away" a lot of free, valuable information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Congrats Sol & team.

One thing that really stood out for me was the endorsements. Having perhaps the most prolific researcher of recent history Adel Moussa (Prof Dr Andro) vouch for you guys, and on the other hand one of the best prep coaches Matt Porter on the same page... That's big.</comment>


The Case Against Adolescence - <AUTHOR> http://jseliger.com/2011/04/11/the-case-against-adolescence-rediscovering-the-adult-in-every-teen-robert-epstein/ <comment><USER2> > There isn't really such a thing as code that is "avant garde" or otherwise > susceptible to influence and taste.

Oh... if only he knew.

<comment><USER3> I'm sure he does know. Going into a long parenthetical aside about the IOCCC wouldn't really have improved the article would it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting review.

I didn't find your "economic argument against child sexuality" convincing however. (I understand you are positing claims about societal beliefs as opposed to your own)

"... we're unhappy when people reproduce and can't afford their offspring. So we call people who mostly aren't economically viable children, even when they're physiologically and psychologically not..."

Being under 18 may be one indicator of financial viability - although many children are born into privilege, are beneficiaries of trust funds, are financially self-sufficient.

Living on welfare benefits (or perhaps even minimum wage?) is a much stronger indicator of financial viability, and yet we don't see wholesale sterilisation of the unemployed or even any organised public policy discouraging sex between employees of the fast food industry.

I suspect that (as usual) there are more complex factors behind "age of consent" legislation than rational economic principles.

<comment><USER5> _although many children are born into privilege, are beneficiaries of trust funds_

Many? MANY!?!

I'd like to meet your friends. I'm guessing they are the ones who gave you this impression. I, for one, would LOVE to finally get some kickbacks from the 'many' trust fund kids out there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Did anyone else do a double-take at the domain name?

I guess I just find it funny that the seminal 'teenager' book was written by J.D. Salinger, and this critical review was written by J. Seliger. Especially when I couldn't remember at first exactly how Salinger's name was spelled.

<comment><AUTHOR> Funny—when I was in high school, some guys in a youth group would call me "Salinger" because they couldn't or didn't want to remember or pronounce my last name ("Seli-ih-gurh"). And people chronically want to put an "n" in my last name ("Selinger").

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The problem is that american adults are really not.</comment>


How many coders does it take to change a lightbulb - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2017-kubernetes/ <comment><USER2> None, it's a hardware problem.</comment>


If you are a static maps user, I'd like your opinion on my free alternative - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jperelli/osm-static-maps <comment><USER2> I'm getting a Heroku error when hitting the demo URL

<comment><AUTHOR> Someone is hotlinking there and sometimes it gets overwhelmed</comment></comment>


DDR5 Memory Specification Released - <AUTHOR> https://www.anandtech.com/show/15912/ddr5-specification-released-setting-the-stage-for-ddr56400-and-beyond <comment><USER2> So many misconceptions here about DRAM. DRAM is miraculously cheap. The process probably costs about $1.50 to $2 per GB, the rest is indeed profit. That nets them maybe $4,000 per wafer - and that includes all the testing, slicing, packaging etc. An average CPU chip in your laptop is about the same size as maybe 3 DRAM chips which cost around $20.

DRAM runs on a separate process which is dominated by the difficulty of building the capacitors. These are roughly the shape of a pencil (long narrow hexagons) where the central structure which holds the capacitor needs to be etched to perfection in a process that can take days. The transistors underneath are, at that scale, about as large as the chad from a paper hole punch. The capacitors are just about as narrow as material science (limit to voltage arcing through the insulation layers) can make them so there is glacially slow progress in shrinking DRAM further. Meanwhile the transistors are at extreme limits of resolution for liquid immersion processing, as also are the lines needed to join the rows and columns. Getting those perfect requires very specialized and competent processing.

They are not easy, second rate circuits. They are a completely separate branch of the silicon world. Unfortunately since they don't scale much any more, current design methods were mature 8 years ago, the only way you get more of them is to build new factories. That means it is a seller's market in a game where building another fab costs $10B and will only succeed if staffed by really expert people. So, it is generally profitable. The 3 vendors cannot easily undercut each other since they all have roughly the same limits, and any attempt to flood the market takes 4 years to build and everyone can see it coming.

So there you are. DRAM is the pivotal technology of the current computer era. Fixing that will most likely require breakthroughs in fundamental memory technology - or a reason for demand to collapse.

</comment><comment><USER3> >Combined with die stacking, which allows for up to 8 dies to be stacked as a single chip, then a 40 element LRDIMM can reach an effective memory capacity of 2TB. Or for the more humble unbuffered DIMM, this would mean we'll eventually see DIMM capacities reach 128GB for your typical dual rank configuration.

So on 8 Channel 16 DIMM per socket you could fit a theoretical 32 _TB_ of memory. This is insane amount of memory and great for In-Memory Database. ( How is Intel Optane going to compete? )

This makes me wonder, what makes DRAM so expensive? It is still hovering at a median price or around $3/GB compared to NAND which is less than $0.1/GB.

<comment><USER4> > This makes me wonder, what makes DRAM so expensive?

Greed does. DRAM makers were antitrust busted at least 7 times on my memory in Taiwan, Korea, and USA.

<comment><USER5> The processes to form NAND and DRAM are completely different. DRAM relies on creating non-leaking capacitors which are highly difficult to manufacture at such a small scale. NAND benefits from innovations in the CPU lithography space since it's essentially all transistor based. Why would you expect them to have the same price, unless you knew nothing about the technology? Also, there are plenty of distinct competitors in the DRAM space. Do you have a source suggesting Micron and Samsung are engaging in price fixing together?

<comment><USER6> If the difficulty of DRAM is in creating capacitors at that size, why haven't we seen a shift toward SRAM (6T, for instance), which is purely transistor- based?

Sure, you have to sacrifice more transistors for the same capacity, but newer processes can fit more on the chip, right? I recall from computer architecture classes that the benefit of DRAM is the ability to use fewer transistors, but if transistors are cheap...

(I'm sure I'm missing something here. Power consumption / heat generation? I also never really understood why SRAM continues to be so expensive, when it seems like it would obviously benefit from smaller processes.)

<comment><USER7> On Intel's 10 nm process you can make SRAM with a density of about 20 megabit/mm². [1] Older processes are much worse (<5 megabit/mm²). [2] A current-gen _DRAM package_ achieves about 170 megabit/mm² (but that's two dies, probably stacked). This article [3] cites 8 Gb on 77 mm² on a 21 nm process, giving 105 megabit/mm², and 148 megabit/mm² for the DDR5 version with a die size of 54 mm². The same article shows a Samsung part with around 200 megabit/mm² density.

So even if you were to manufacture SRAM on Intel's ultra-expensive 10 nm logic process, you'd need a massive amount of silicon for the same capacity.

[1] [https://fuse.wikichip.org/wp- content/uploads/2017/12/isscc-2...](https://fuse.wikichip.org/wp- content/uploads/2017/12/isscc-2018-intel-10-sram-testchip-density.png) [2] [https://d3i71xaburhd42.cloudfront.net/f20203949a744276e338d6...](https://d3i71xaburhd42.cloudfront.net/f20203949a744276e338d6a4c647e9db3facfdf6/4-Figure13-1.png) [3] [https://www.anandtech.com/show/13999/sk-hynix-details-its- dd...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/13999/sk-hynix-details-its- ddr56400-dram-chip)

<comment><USER8> Forgive my naivete but: 20 megabit/mm^2 for SRAM...a 1u rack is 600mm X 914mm = 548,400mm^2. Multiply that by 20 megabits and that is about 70 Gigabytes. Does that mean in theory we could build a rackmount server with an external L1 cache of 70 Gigabytes? The cost would be horrendous but I'm sure there is a scenario where it could make sense.

<comment><USER9> This would require an impractical amount of wires. For an 8 core, 64 bit cpu with differential signaling would need something like 8 _(64+64)_ 2 = 2048 wires, and the length of the wires would mean the latency would be much worse then an on-die cache.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> >All the while, there are several smaller changes [...], such as [...] on-die ECC

This means we don't have to worry about ECC support by CPU/motherboard anymore, right?

<comment><USER11> I don't assume anything. Intel may find a way to deliberately cripple ECC in the memory controller.

<comment><USER12> And the market may find a way to cripple Intel.

I'm looking forward to our ARM future. :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wonder if this spec increases or decrease memory access latency. The article doesn't say, which makes me suspicious.

After all, DDR4 has higher latency than DDR3 running at the same clock speed.

<comment><USER14> That is generally the trade off made to get better clock speeds. And the absolute latency is better with once the speed gets sufficiently fast.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> « The big change here is that the command and address bus is being shrunk and partitioned, with the pins being reallocated to the data bus for the second memory channel. Instead of a single 24-bit CA bus, DDR5 will have two 7-bit CA busses, one for each channel »

If there are two 32-bit data busses rather than one 64-bit bus, arithmetic suggests they shouldn't need to find extra pins from somewhere.

So maybe the rationale for shrinking the CA busses (to 7 rather than 12) is something different?

<comment><USER16> [https://images.anandtech.com/doci/15912/DDR5_12.png](https://images.anandtech.com/doci/15912/DDR5_12.png)

DDR4 appears to have had 40 and 32 bit data buses, while this one has 40/40.

<comment><USER17> In other words, data bits stay at 64 but ECC bits go from 8 to 16.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Does this finally address Rowhammer? Ctrl-F on the article yields nothing...

<comment> kube-system That's more of a die-level issue rather than a module-level issue, isn't it?

<comment><USER19> DDRwhatever is primarily an definition of package level interconnect which has possibility of being used as module level interconnect as one of design constraints. And row hammer and similar things are completely irrelevant for such specifications.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> How is just splitting the memory in two separate channels going to make anything faster?

How will this affect driver complexity and cache-misses?

<comment><USER11> This is sort of explained in the article. I think they had to use burst length 16 [1] to scale to 6400 MHz, but 16 * 64 bits would be 128 bytes or two cache lines. The whole memory system works in cache lines, so it wouldn't be good if the processor requested one cache line and got two. So they use BL16 with a narrower 32-bit channel to fetch one 64-byte cache line.

As long as multiple cores are accessing memory or prefetching is on (it's almost always on), both channels will be utilized so software won't notice.

[1] When you do a read operation on DRAM you get a multi-cycle burst of data, not just one word. This amortizes command/address overhead and presumably matches the slow-but-wide internal DRAM array with the fast-but-narrow channel. See [https://people.freebsd.org/~lstewart/articles/cpumemory.pdf](https://people.freebsd.org/~lstewart/articles/cpumemory.pdf) sec. 2.2.

<comment><USER21> Reminds me a little bit of Virtual Channel Memory (VCM) SDRAM from NEC.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Are there any changes in there for bulk memory operations such as copying or zeroing?

</comment><comment><USER23> Wonder if this spec will make it easy for embedded systems to catch up. It always seems like they lag behind what's cutting edge. Maybe that's a cost/benefit analysis.

<comment><USER24> I have a brand new design with DDR2. I can power memory from existing 1.8V rail, no need for more voltage regulators. And 400 MHz is totally ok for me since I can have whole memory bandwidth for myself, no operating system, etc. And my application is very cutting edge for sure in its domain.

<comment><USER23> I'm assuming LPDDR? I think the goals between the two are a bit different. I think that embedded gets quite messy since it's particularly targeted.

Thanks for letting me know of your experience!

<comment><USER24> MT47 family. Very normal 1.8V DDR2.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Both DDR4 and DDR5 have the same 288 pinout. Hopefully nothing bad happens if a stick is plugged into the wrong socket.

<comment><USER26> Same pin _count_ , but different keying provides a mechanical barrier against inserting the wrong kind of module.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Why not QDR2?

<comment><USER28> Despite sounding related, QDR and DDR are mostly unrelated technologies. They are also both poorly named.

The real purpose of DDR is not actually to double the data rate, but to halve your clock speed and allow you to use the same frequency for your clock as your data. This mostly benefits signal integrity.

QDR is better understood as memory with two ports, one for reading and one for writing, which can be used at the same time. This is a lot more expensive and really doesn't have huge benefits for PCs compared to just adding more channels (as DDR5 does).

<comment><USER17> Well there's "QDR" memory like you describe, and then there's "QDR" like GDDR5X and GDDR6 have, which is a single port doing 4 transfers per clock.

That said DDR5 is solidly on two transfers per clock, so I don't understand the suggestion to call it or use "QDR2" (what's QDR1 for contrast?).

<comment><USER28> QDR/QDR2 are real interfaces, although for SRAM. Afaict Micron and Cypress make them for specialialty applications.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> so, will we see mini-ITX mobos that support 128Gb RAM?

<comment><USER11> Yes, although maybe not soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This may be a stupid point, but, for personal use of computers in their current form, how much memory do you really need? I'm still a little baffled why chrome requires GBs of memory...? Can we have lean software please?

<comment><USER31> In a word: No.

CPUs have become so fast that relative to their "internal" speeds, RAM is the new hard disk. Databases are becoming in-memory, and going out to fixed storage, even SSD, is an anathema.

New applications are not designed to work on data sets bigger than physical memory. Disk-to-disk streaming algorithms are practically unheard of outside of a few niche scenarios. Like I said, even database vendors are moving to in- memory!

I love machines with huge amounts of memory. My laptop has 64 GB, and it's great! I can run entire fleets of servers in a local hypervisor. I can load huge blobs of CSV or JSON data into the shell and not have to worry about the 2-5x overhead of the in-memory representation. It'll fit just fine. I can run every "bloated" app at once and still have 50 GB free for "whatever". I've reindexed a database on my laptop in minutes that would have taken days(!) on a production server because it didn't have enough RAM and was thrashing the storage like crazy.

Another way to look at it is the "GB per CPU core". With existing AMD EPYC 2 CPUs having 64 cores and 128 threads, the typical 512 GB memory configuration is "only" 8 GB per core, or 4 GB per thread! With a dual-socket server, halve those numbers again. Similarly, mainstream desktop Ryzen CPUs have up to 16 cores, and that's not even talking about the not-so-mainstream Threadripper line. For 4GB per core, you'd need 64 GB.

It's likely that AMD will release 24 or 32 core _mainstream_ CPUs in the near future, maybe as soon as 2 years from now when their 5nm products start shipping. I fully expect server CPUs to hit 96-128 cores per socket around the same time frame, or up to 512 hardware threads in a standard two-socket server. Terabytes of memory is going to become "standard" very soon now.

<comment><USER32> It really is nice when you can afford to have the latest doubling of memory, and do things you couldn't do easily before. Maybe run an entire DC on your computer. Works very well while you're on the upper end.

However, that does not address the sheer wastefulness of our technological trends to require more resources to do things slower, but displayed with smaller and more colorful pixels. Should everyone have a 64-core 512GB memory computer to view web pages, play minecraft or whatever? Will that be too small to write a text document in 20 years time? Will every person on the planet be expected to get a bigger computer because they can't run the (electron-in- ethereum-on-browser-in-container)^n pancomputer?</comment></comment></comment>


Which options do I have to monetize desktop application like TweetDeck  - <AUTHOR>

Hello all I build desktop application that is integration between Twitter / facebook/ picasa / (can be others ) on speed (build with c++ with much more options). It is  build first for my use . but then people liked it and started to use it .
Its still in very early beta . before I publish to it to the public . which options do I have to monetize it. So it can generate income.
Thanks <comment><USER2> You can charge people to use your product if it solves a real pain point. For example <http://clipyourphotos.com/bulkr/> and some other applications by a developer seems to be doing nicely. It may not get you to millions of dollars in revenues, but few thousands every year is a good start nonetheless.

</comment><comment><USER3> Advertising. Affiliate programs. Maybe a partnership with a relevant website that can pay you for leads. Hogan give this away for free to get people to sign up to another service you create.</comment>


The evolutionary origin of depression - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13899022 <comment><USER2> Interesting hypothesis. However, isn't depression sometimes getting in the way of pursuing perfectly attainable goals? For example, finding more friends or losing a bit of weight are definitely not overly ambitious goals, but depressed people often despair that they will never be able to reach them.

<comment><USER3> From the opening paragraph: _[He] likens the relationship between mild and clinical depression to the one between normal and chronic pain. He sees both pain and low mood as warning mechanisms and thinks that, just as understanding chronic pain means first understanding normal pain, so understanding clinical depression means understanding mild depression._

In other words, yes, people with clinical depression find that it gets in the way of their daily life. His hypothesis is about why normal, healthy people suffer from low mood / mild depression from time-to-time, and what evolutionary advantage that might give us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is one of those concepts that I always simply assumed to be true. Ordinary feelings of depression (i.e. specifically not chronic or "clinical" depression) are quite normal responses to situations that are, in fact, depressing. These feelings can help shake us out of situations we might otherwise suffer through.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is interesting. I wonder if it means anything more than "depressive people are those that are unable to let go of failure"? Seems like an apt description of many generally depressed people I know.

Side note: Anyone have thoughts on whether 'depression' is an umbrella term for distinct mental traits?

<comment><AUTHOR> _Anyone have thoughts on whether 'depression' is an umbrella term for distinct mental traits?_

My sense of the evidence, as I read the masterwork on the subject

<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195135792/>

just now for research I am doing, is that depression has multiple distinct causes, and a variety of particular manifestations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> My theory on it is something between "pack" benefit and "individual" benefit. I believe that depression is beneficial to pack hunters.

It goes like this: Operating in groups offers a great advantage. If a member of the group is lost, however, there follows a period of time where the group is more vulnerable. They haven't yet adapted (tactically) to a smaller group, so business as usual could end up getting them killed.

A period of mourning, however, with lowered dangerous activity, puts the group in less danger while they recoup from their loss. During this time they're more likely to gain new members, train young ones or simply adapt their tactics to fit their smaller numbers.

Think of it like this: Take Kobe off the team and the Lakers start to really suck. However, let them fill the fifth spot and rethink their strategies... and they start to look like a good team again.

<comment><USER7> Seems true, but I think we're talkin about a different kind of depression here than mourning over someone's death.

</comment></comment><comment> b-man I don't think the journalist did a good job when he took his conclusions as:

"Depression may turn out to be an inevitable price of living in a dynamic society."

That amounts to, Hey, we are doing something that hurt us as a society, but what the heck, lets all take the symptom of our mistake as a 'price' for our 'correct' path.

The blind leading the wounded.

</comment><comment><USER8> This will change in the future: everyone will know early on in life what their capabilities are based on analysis of their DNA.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you really think that people can set all of their personal goals just from knowing their genome?

<comment><USER8> Your genome will give you critical information about the sorts of things you would be good at.

For example, an analysis of your genome might tell you that you should pursue a startup that makes use of sophisticated mathematics.

The specifics of that startup are up to you.

<comment><USER9> I think it would be much more effective to evaluate whether you're actually good at sophisticated mathematics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Having thought about this article for a day, I'm wondering what the view of the cited scientist is of elevated human mood states, those that correspond to pathological states of hypomania and mania. One of the tricky issues in treating depression is to avoid inducing mania.

</comment><comment><USER10> seems more likely to me that depression doesn't get in the way of survival and reproduction.

</comment><comment><USER11> I disagree with this argument. I think another one's more salient. For a pack animal such as primal humans probably were, a certain type of moderate depression is a survival mechanism for dealing with low social status. Your appetite and libido decrease, you become inassertive, you accept mistreatment from others. Subjectively, this process and experience sucks, but lacking desire to mate with the alpha female keeps the omega male alive. Much more importantly (since nature doesn't care much about unsuccessful individuals) it's a survival mechanism for the _pack_ ; the depressive response ensures that, in extreme scarcity, the less successful individuals slink away and accept starvation, rather than challenging and potentially causing harm to the more important ones.

In modern society, this reaction is completely useless and utterly maladaptive. It also has a tendency to fire in people at all levels of social status, because modern society (with its dynamic, subtle, and multileveled play of social status) is confusing to the primal mind. So a depressive response can be rightly considered an illness.

Civilization expects everyone to assume the role most closely analogous to high beta/low alpha. People who have omega traits tend to be depressives; people who have too many alpha traits are sociopaths.

<comment><USER12> _Much more importantly (since nature doesn't care much about unsuccessful individuals) it's a survival mechanism for the pack_

I am not a biologist, but according to (what I understood of) "The Selfish Gene" and the like, the natural selection takes place on the level of genes. Since the successful reproduction of a gene is usually (barring some exceptional situations mentioned in the book) tightly coupled with the fate of the individual carrying the gene, reasoning about natural selection that operates on individuals typically leads to correct conclusions. Reasoning about natural selection on packs is on the other hand typically incorrect, if it leads to conclusions different from the individuals-based selection.

In your example, if you imagine two genes, one that tells the low status carrier to accept starvation, and the other that tells its carrier to fight for dear life no matter what its social status, the second gene will win and the first one will go extinct, even if from the point of view of the whole pack the first gene could be better.

This is not to say that your hypothesis is invalid, as I'm sure it can be rephrased in terms of genes/individuals without losing the core message.

<comment><USER13> Ok, well... I _am_ a biologist and one of the first things you need to understand about "The Selfish Gene" is that much of what Dawkins presents as fact is very much under dispute in the biological research community. Be very cautious about accepting anything he presents as "the one true way" of understanding evolution. It is anything but!

One term you can Google for more information is "multi-level selection". I find the pack animal explanation actually rather interesting. It meshes well with some of the research that I'm doing on evolution as targeted at resource utilization efficiency. I think the real question is to what extent primitive man was a "pack" animal as opposed to a "group" or "tribe" animal. That is, I think there are many open ended questions regarding the social structure of early man (for one thing, if early man was a pack animal you'd have to explain the origin of monogamy, or at least limited polygamy, in place of the harem structure of most pack animals).

<comment><USER14> Evolution is essentially an algorithm. That's why we can use logic to predict that genes that regulate behavior for "less successful individuals to slink away and accept starvation" are unlikely to arise, since not a single one of the ancestors of that individual were less successful and slunk away to accept starvation.

<comment><USER13> There's a mister Hardy and a mister Weinberg that would like to have a word with you about that logic...

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardy-Weinberg>

The other thing to keep in mind is that evolution works as a movement through nucleotide space over a fitness landscape. The fundamental flaw in much of Dawkins work is his reliance on a biologically unrealistic definition of a "gene". Sure, if you go with his definition of genes then logic can tell you all sorts of things about evolution that aren't necessarily true.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


San Francisco to finally get broadband competition - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/07/20/BA2T1KCHSC.DTL&feed=rss.news

<comment><AUTHOR> It looks like the BoS _finally_ approved AT&T to compete with Comcast on the low end. SF has areas unreachable by cable (such as major swaths of downtown), and my old office only alternative was 3MBps DSL, due to distance from the CO. The roll out will take years, but at least we'll start seeing the prices come down a bit - with higher speeds! Evil competition is better than no competition.</comment>


Top Quotes from SaaStr '18 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.intello.io/top-quotes-from-saastr-2018/ <comment><USER2> I loved this quote: "Customers don't give a shit about your vision, they just want you to solve their problem." Peter Reinhardt, CEO @ Segment</comment>


Diagnosing the Steel Failure in the SF Transit Center - <AUTHOR> https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a29329189/salesforce-transit-center-cracks/ <comment><USER2> I worked briefly as a bike mechanic and spent some time working on old cars. During that time picked up a mild fascination with failure analysis and one or two tricks.

If a bolt or a flange fails, you can look at the oxidation patterns and see if the failure happened all at once or over time. Most of the times I encountered a piece of metal where only half of the fractured surface was shiny, indicating that this piece has been failing for quite some time. It's a bit unsettling to think about how many fasteners around you might be in that state so I... don't. But there virtue in disassembling and reassembling old equipment, and inspection is certainly part of that.

My buddy in college was in the ME program and he came to me excited one day because he'd just learned about metal failure and figured out why airplane structural members have so many holes in them. Weight, of course, but also it turns out the shockwave when a crack starts can propagate the crack, not unlike how breaking 5 boards karate style is only about 2x as hard as breaking one. If that force hits a hole in the material it travels around the circumferences and it acts more like a spring. Thus drilling a hole in the end of a crack to stop it.

So a localized flaw in the wrong spot in the material can start a fracture, and spread into material that's up to standards.

If I remember my physics at all, there's more torque on the end of the beams, so in theory a crack could start anywhere but it might be more likely near the ends. Still, a crack that close to a weld seems pretty sketchy. If I saw that in a bike, I'd presume the metal was damaged in the assembly process. I encountered cases of both materials defect and manufacturing defect. In particular a case of bad epoxy from Trek (assembly) a couple years before excessively anodized aluminum rims showed up on Cannondales (material defect).

</comment><comment><USER3> It's so crazy how something as subtle as the order of welds and whether they ground the welds would so dramatically affect the strength of huge structural components.

<comment><USER4> Steel is funny stuff; you do everything right but one thing, and that bites you. But unlike the FIU bridge disaster the building was designed with proper safeguards so that one flaw would not knock the whole thing down. Read the FIU report, it's very interesting. I always try to write code assuming something somewhere will break, at least you want it to do nothing harmful not matter what. With large real world projects, failure can kill people very easily, and being redundant is a real requirement, not a nice to have. From a steel standpoint I marvel at the Brooklyn Bridge, almost 150 years old, and has less issues than any other NY bridge.

<comment><USER5> My memory might be wrong, but wasn't the Brooklyn Bridge built when steel was still a relatively new thing? Its properties weren't entirely understood, or even well understood, so as a result, it was tremendously over-built.

Now, everything is about how little material you can use, how close to the minimums you can get and still maintain a theoretical factor of safety. The problem is that in doing so, small mistakes have a much bigger impact.

<comment><USER6> I am not a structural engineer, but have close friends who are pretty senior. In a long conversation one night, we spoke about this. He said there is a pull towards using less material / close to the minimums, driven by the builder. But the engineering team has final say (modulo their customer finding another shop).

Most relevant, he said in his experience, everything is still overbuilt. They engineer it to meet spec, then add in safety factor of 2-8x. (Said safety factors are also part of the specification, interestingly! What if software estimates had a specific set of fudge factor guidelines like this?)

<comment><USER7> The difference between physical engineering and computing is that their world is unknown, while ours is known.

Both of these subject to individual exceptions, but broadly true.

You can't request a steel or wood beam and then say "Here are its exact properties".

You can instatiate a class of MyFooType and say "Here are its exact properties".

In that sense, physical engineering is essentially a Bayesian approach, where reality is always unknown. But with high probability greater than some number of deviations from the mean.

Source: architecture / BC major before CS

<comment><USER6> Respectfully, I strongly disagree. Software components, in isolation, may be understandable. Software systems are significantly more complex and often have completely unexpected properties.

Not to dismiss the challenges of physical engineering, but as you say -- it's essentially Bayesian, with very strong priors available. Physical reality, on the human scale, can be comprehended with relatively straightforward equations, mod some fudge factor. We can account for the unknowns in the physical world with that; whereas software's complexity isn't limited to linear changes -- complexity can quickly grow exponentially.

<comment><USER8> Shared this with the engineers and programmers at my company. They all had a good laugh.

Software is deterministic. Reality is not. Engineering is significantly harder than programming, and programmers have only themselves to blame for not properly handling failure modalities.

<comment><USER6> I think we're using different meanings for software. I'm using it to include all things around building software -- requirements gathering, writing, shipping, maintaining, ops, deployment, etc.

Software is not predictable. That's why nobody can accurately predict how long a project will take.

<comment><USER8> Software is predictable compared to reality because every part of it is deterministic, or can be programmed to be deterministic.

The fact that most programmers are incapable of properly coding their software to be deterministic says more about the quality of the programmer than the difficulty of the field.

<comment><USER6> Reality doesn't have to be deterministic to be predictable. Software components can be (theoretically) deterministic and still have unpredictable behaviors in complex systems.

The fact that these welders didn't clean the acetylene edges doesn't mean that this outcome was unpredictable. Wouldn't it say as much about the welders as the difficult of the field?

<comment><USER7> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nondestructive_testing](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nondestructive_testing)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Completely non-intuitive to me how the polishing of a hole could prevent cracking (and was not done properly).

But then reading below how drilling a hole at the end of a crack to prevent it propagating, maybe it has to do with that concept.

<comment><USER10> It doesn't prevent cracking, it removes microcracks that are already there. Martensite may not literally be a hole in the metal, but it has many of the same properties.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's interesting how stuff like this works out - this looks like it was resolved in a fairly simple way, no epic lawsuits, just an analysis, and then a fix.

<comment><USER12> San Francisco builders have a lot of experience in beefing up structural support in existing buildings. All but 20 of the unreinforced masonry buildings in San Francisco were reinforced by 2014. Unfortunately nine of them are at SF General Hospital.

<comment><USER13> > SF General Hospital

I'm sure Zuck has a couple more bucks he could throw there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Another reason why SF declared no confidence in the TJPA is that they somehow managed to accrue liability for the Millennium Tower (a.k.a. the Leaning Tower of SOMA) even though that disaster was clearly caused by the property developer's cutting corners on the foundation.

</comment><comment><USER15> Wondering if there's a way to learn more about how they modeled the brittle crack growth

<comment><USER16> Not my area of expertise - I did two semesters of solid mechanics as part of my engineering degree 10 years ago. All I really remember is hoop stress and Kic

The wikipedia article on Fracture mechanics ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fracture_mechanics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fracture_mechanics)) seems to be pretty good - explains some of the mathematics involved - which is a start towards modelling it. See section on predicting crack paths.

You'd also need to know how the structural member was loaded and it's geometry - software like ANSYS is used for modelling this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is what happens when non-engineers try to do engineering related things. There's a lesson here for all the not-coms in SF pretending to be software companies.

What a colossal waste of tax payer money - not that SF or the wider general California population care.

<comment><USER18> Pretty sure that the engineers involved in the project were all working for top tier firms in their respective domains. How is your comment at all relevant?

<comment><AUTHOR> The article even lists them and their corporate pedigrees.</comment></comment></comment>